


Vis Pacem, Para Bellum

by justmariamay



Series: Kyrie Eleison [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Biblical References, Brotherhood, Character Study, Gen, Historical References, Mental Health Issues, Rape/Non-con Elements, Separations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-07
Updated: 2015-01-07
Packaged: 2018-03-04 08:06:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3024173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justmariamay/pseuds/justmariamay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's always been a game. No need to make it a tragedy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Vis Pacem, Para Bellum

His boots are filled with sand, stardust and loneliness. His body aches from exhaustion and blood loss, but he feels at ease. His horse is racing somewhere and can’t stop. She’s fast, the fastest; all he can do is hold tight. It’s always been like this. Not that he really remembers, but everything is so familiar he doesn’t question why or where he’s going.

He’s first actual memory is leviathan’s great hunt. It’s not even a war. They don’t fight each other, they prey on each other. It’s funny and sad how those perfect creatures are diminished to wild animals by a primal instinct. Famine outdid himself. The simplest way is usually the best one. War is so proud of his elder brother.

But the one who calls himself a God is pissed. For someone who claims to be omnipotent he deals with failures in strange ways. He doesn’t destroy his creatures; he doesn’t heal them from Famine’s curse either. He gives them dimension that loops back on itself in space and time. There is no death. There is only bleak sun, evergreen forest and eternal hunt.

But they don’t accept the gift. And it is when he meets her and him.

*****

They both are like perennial springs of life, fresh and vibrant. From one he wants to drink and drink and never have enough, by another he wants to seat watching its crystal clear sprays and listening to its wonderful song.

She, who gives life. Eve is special. A scary woman, a scary mother, who can kill for her children just as easily as she can kill them herself. She is a lot like him. She sparks passion in his heart: he wants to have her and wants to kill her. He can’t kill her so he takes her. It’s their third or fourth meeting when he takes her from behind against the tree. There are more rendezvous to come. The desire to defile and hurt her drives him crazy, even more so when she just laughs at him, sometimes through tears. She is creative in a way only the God is; and when she shows him what they’ve created together he is amazed how beautiful and ugly his children can be. Sometimes she tells she loves him as she tries to claw his eyes out. Sometimes he almost says it back.

He, a winged creature like him, is special too. He stands out among his twins. A good warrior, a good brother, who’d give his life for his family just as easily as he’d take it from someone else. He is a lot like him. He calls himself a messenger, an angel. God sent him to chase the leviathans into their new home. He decides to help the angel, when his brothers are eaten and he is left alone, trapped in Purgatory with leviathans. Red suits him and he fights well, but he becomes even better when War puts in his shaking hands some primitive weapon. When they are out of Purgatory, Michael tells him there is nothing left to fight and lulls him with his lovely voice. It is also Michael who wakes him up eons later.

*****

He opens his eyes, when a beautiful red hoofed animal nudges him awake. The world around is strange and foreign. The sun doesn’t shine as brightly, the earth below his feet doesn’t feel as solid. Everything seems much more fragile like it can shatter faster than ice crust on the puddles in chilly morning, it cracks and crunches. Heaven is even less calm. It calls for him and he can’t ignore the calling. He mounts his horse, it knows the way.

It is suspiciously quiet up there. He recognizes it though. A silence before the storm.

He finds his old friend in such beautiful place he wants nothing more than to see it burn. The angels wings look better than the last time he saw them, but they are damaged: lower wings are broken, upper four have feathers torn from them here and there. And there is a wound on his chest, not serious, but it bleeds a lot. War tries to read his thoughts, but there is only confusion in celestial creature’s mind.

“You know me,” notes Michael, “do I know you?”

“Don’t you remember? We had so much fun together,” War resents the fact that Michael has forgotten him, but who knows how long he slept. “I’m your friend. I’m here because apparently _you_ need me. Again.”

Michael doesn’t question him; he trusts him outspokenly as he lets War in and allows him to see through his eyes. War doesn’t know what he would do if _his_ brothers betrayed him like that, but… there is nothing a good portion of violence can’t solve. Once again he puts a sword in Michael’s hand and whispers into his ear things no one would want to hear. And once again Michael manages to stun him because the first blood he spills is his own and it burns with a purifying fire on the blue steel of the blade.

It is flame of life, thinks War, for it is what calls Death here.

*****

He watches in disgust how brother kills brother down on earth. Any war is a fratricide of sort, but he doesn’t have part in this one. Whatever Cain thinks to himself, War knows the truth. War knows that those humans love to destroy and to conquer. And he has no doubt that they will prove it over and over, making him endless sacrifices. Spiteful selfish little creatures.

They inherit the Earth. Losers.

*****

A war over a woman? Really? Helena is a pretty thing though, too pretty for his liking, but not really worth fighting for. And it’s all a damn apple. Another story that started with a damn fruit. Well, that little goddess Erin might be one of his spawn, makes Daddy proud.

Well, it doesn’t matter what mortals are fighting for as long as they keep fighting. Animosity, anger, fear, greed, pride and ‘ _honor_ ’ – he’d laugh if it didn’t make him sick. It truly does and yet… and yet he’ll never stop. War feeds him and at the same time exhausts him, war makes him who he is.

So he does what he does best. He answers mortals when they pray to their gods. He whispers to Odysseus in his sleep to burn down the ships. He puts Achilles’ armor where Patroclus easily finds it. He looks through Hector’s eyes when demigod strikes him down. Yet he isn’t the one to bring discord into the Greek ranks, they manage it just fine on their own. He isn’t the one to make Trojans deaf to Cassandra’s pleads and warnings. And wooden horse isn’t his idea.

As Troy lies in ruins he watches Greek ships taking off. He sees them off with a smile, because he knows what a warm welcome waits for Agamemnon at home. After all everyone get what they deserve.

*****

He is good at creating conditions for his brothers. Long war leads to famine, mountains of corpses to epidemic, and there is death, always death. He works really hard to bring them together. Though how much it will take to bring together all four again? He doesn’t have such power. It will take a miracle. The catastrophe.  But he doesn’t think much about it as he cuts another head or spills someone’s guts. He doesn’t think at all when everything around colors in shades of red and silence sinks in the sound of screams and battle cries. Everything is better than silence. Silence kills.

Red mist dissipates leaving in his sight grayish morning and pale sun as he hears an unsure ‘brother’ from behind. He turns around and spreads his arms in welcome ignoring the broken collarbone.

Pestilence is there on his grey-green skinny mare and as always nobody’s seen him coming. War helps his little brother to dismount not listening to the protests.

Muttering “I am contagious,” sick rider still embraces his trigger-happy brother.

“I feel better now. I’m so much more at peace, when you are near,” he lets the contentment of closeness of his brother’s feverish body to calm his feverish mind. He holds tight hearing his brother’s fragile bones breaking under his touch, feeling an infection crawling into the wound on his thigh. They always hurt each other. At moments like this he can’t help but wonder if Pestilence will ever be healed, if Famine will ever be sated, if Death will ever be alive or if he himself will ever find true peace. Rational part of him tells ‘no’, but the rest of his being stubbornly won’t believe he can’t win. Because he always wins even when all the others lose.

“In my last delirium I… I think I was calling mother,” his brother whispers as if unsure he should be telling this.

“I dreamt we were children and played catch and run,” he confesses in response.

Through the violent fit of coughing he hears laughter.

“Isn’t it what we are always doing?”

He doesn’t know if they had parents or if they even were children once upon a time. He will never know. Maybe it is their minds that play cruel games with them.

The time to part comes too soon and he can’t stay, but he doesn’t say goodbye. In of another dream he saw sleeping on the horseback he was making his farewell to his eldest brother. In that dream he was… young, they both were, and both knew he wasn’t supposed to come back. It was one of the weirdest dreams, and he doesn’t want anything similar in reality.

Catch and run, catch and run… If this is all a game… well, not in his nature to play by rules.

*****

‘ _Sell your clothes and buy a sword_ ,’ what a wise idea. And how ridiculous is that so many people think of it literally. Word of God became the perfect excuse for violence. The crusades are fun. They fight for the old shrines while ruining the temples which their souls are. Irony is a bitch.

The only holy war that makes sense is the greater jihad, because each and every one is their own worst enemy.

*****

One time he arrives to his destination to find a devastated town. Nothing special about it.

“There is not much for you to do here,” says Famine instead of greeting.

“I can see that. I don’t know why I am here.”

A bitter smile on his brother’s lips answers his question. They have quarreled again, Death and Famine. He wishes he were here sooner, and yet he’s glad he hasn’t witnessed his brothers’ fight. But he doesn’t need to see it to know it was an agonizing spectacle.

“Why..?” he asks too quiet. The question isn’t addressed to someone in particular.

With a heavy sigh Famine puts a raw-boned hand on his shoulder. It grounds him and looking in Famine’s sunken eyes War feels desperately helpless. Standing before his elder brothers he never feels powerful and strong, he feels small and stupid.

“Why can’t you forgive him?” he asks more clearly. It’s not that they can’t share the souls or something. He and Pestilence could never understand why their brothers are so cold to each other. And worst part of it that Death was becoming colder to all of them.

“If only I could remember what is there to forgive,” he feels sorrow and anger in his brother.

Famine could read him as easily as he reads any other soul and knows what he longs for. But he doesn’t encourage him like he encourages his victims.

“Don’t take it to heart, dear brother, there is nothing you can do.”

_No. No, no, no…_

“Please, don’t say that,” he begs. “What else is there for us but… _us_?”

Because this family is the only thing that allows him be _him_ , not just embodiment of war. War would continue without him, he exists because of war, not the other way around. If he disappears, humans will continue to destroy each other (only less skillfully). He isn’t afraid to _die_. He is afraid to be left alone. He is afraid of silence.

And Famine doesn’t say anything for a while. Their horses are chasing each other airily, his red one playfully nudges her black sister for a last time and races towards him.

“Go, brother. You go, I stay,” as always. He receives a kiss to the temple as the goodbye. Speeding up he doesn’t dare to look bak.

*****

More and more often it seems to him that he is… being ripped apart. He finds himself in different places at one moment, watching the world from dozen different eyes, wearing different skins. Sometimes he strikes and sees that he is the one bleeding. Sometimes he forgets who he is. He lives thousands of lives and survives thousands of deaths. And he slowly loses himself in this ocean of blood and only on the horseback he knows who he is. He’s changing skins almost daily.

One day Death passed by not even recognizing him.

*****

When he wakes from his frenzied state he is in camp of Englishmen under the walls of Calais, he doesn’t remember who he is now. Hours ago he cried ‘Montjoie! Saint Denis!’ along with French.

Looking at red and yellow flames of campfire he feels something behind the rage, a hope maybe? The world is bulging at the seams, full of running sores and open wounds, infected by sin and malice. He sees the signs and it makes him smile. Famine has been walking these lands for some time. Pestilence is already on the islands across the channel. Death will soon join them to gather the richest harvest since the Flood. And Hell will follow his steps. The are going to have so much fun. _Together_. He looks up at the walls and thinks aloud.

“It won’t take long now.”

“It’s been eight months, sir Lambert,” young voice reminds him his current name. Sir Lambert Hayward, 31 years old, wife and three children back in England, Lancashire. Too bad poor sod is never going to see them again.

There is a young knight beside him cleaning his sword, red hair and grey eyes. And not a single naughty thought, how interesting. What was his name? Ah, yes…

“A la guerre comme à la guerre, sir Alastair.”

In war as in war.


End file.
